What is the relation between “world literature” and “human rights”? Both notions imply a universalizing gesture, by relying on transcultural aesthetic or literary categories (world literature) or shared moral values (human rights). Yet, in both cases, these universalistic claims entail the risk of neglecting cultural and political differences, thus projecting hegemonic (Western) values on a global scale. As a result, somewhat paradoxically, inclusive notions such as “world literature” and “human rights” can become instrumental to silencing or marginalizing alternative views of both literature and humanity—especially those from the global postcolonial South.

In recent years, this tension between universality and specificity has been the subject of growing scholarly attention both with regard to world literature (Helgesson et al. 2020, Bhattacharya 2018, Bessière 2017) and human rights (Parikh 2019, Dawes 2018, McClennen and Moore 2016). However, much remains to be done in terms of exploring and problematizing the links between these two concepts. Building on the growing body of work mentioned above, this panel will interrogate the multiple relations between world literature and human rights from a transnational, postcolonial and decolonial perspective. In particular, we will look at ways in which world literature from the Global South can respond to human rights violations, and shed light on what is excluded or sidelined by Western-centered approaches to human rights.

The session features three presentations given by a total of four talented young researchers, and is structured as follows:

1) In the first paper, Arielle Stambler (UCLA) focuses on social rights (i.e., human rights to material security). Existing scholarship on social rights examines them as legal and political concepts, but social rights are also dynamic cultural constructions, shaped as much by narrative and the imagination as they are by state constitutions and international law. By turning to Nicole Dennis-Benn’s Here Comes the Sun (2016), a novel set in 1990s Jamaica, Stambler demonstrates how a particular genre of postcolonial novel, namely the postcolonial debt novel, can make visible the dehumanizing effects of debt at both the individual and national levels, while at the same discerning an inflection point: a potential starting place for recommitting to social rights in the present.

2) In the second paper, Anushree Joshi and Maira Rehman (McGill) shift the focus from the Caribbean to the Asia-Pacific region, and from debt crises to crises regarding statehood, citizenship, and refugee displacement. They analyze three important contemporary texts: Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains: Writings from Manus Prison (2018), Habiburahman’s First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks (2018), and Arundhati Roy’s Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction (2020). Employing theories of inter alia Rob Nixon and Arundhati Roy, their analysis of these testimonial, fictionalized, and critical third-person accounts suggests that a possible way forward for contemporary literature is to counter the institutionalized notion of a fixed center of human rights discourse by presenting imaginative and innovative ways of coexistence.

3) In the third paper, Sarah Dara (York) shifts the focus to the Indian subcontinent and to crises regarding sex trafficking. Dara’s paper analyzes Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful” (1995), Tariq Mehmood’s Song of Gulzarina (2016), and Shobha Rao's Girls Burn Brighter (2018), works that represent the experiences of sex trafficking survivors from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Through trauma theorization and feminist and postcolonial perspectives, her paper looks at sexual violence and its effects on the voice of characters. It argues that stereotypes of the “helpless victim” who has no voice and cannot save herself are false, and the characters in these novels do challenge trauma and violence through their agency or interiority. Thus doing, the paper stresses the importance of including the voices of South Asian survivors to improve their representation, challenge racial stereotypes of passive women of color, and improve rehabilitation services available to them.

Timing: Introduction (5 minutes) + three papers (18 minutes each) + discussion (16 minutes).

References

Bessière, J. (2017). What Is Left of Comparative Literature and World Literature? Notes on International Literature, Its Concrete Universality and Enigmacity. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 44(3).

Bhattacharya, B. (2018). Postcolonial Writing in the Era of World Literature: Texts, Territories, Globalizations. London: Routledge.

Dawes, J. (2018). The Novel of Human Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

Helgesson, S., Neumann, B. and Ripplet, G., eds (2020). Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures. Berlin: De Gruyter.

McClennen, S. and Moore, A., eds (2016). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights. London: Routledge.

Parikh, C., ed. (2019). Human Rights and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.